


Surviving The Dollhouse

by revenant_oozi



Category: DCU - Comicverse, Green Arrow
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Domestic, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-15
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 10:37:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/405475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revenant_oozi/pseuds/revenant_oozi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Not particularly proud of this chunk, but soon it's going to be moving along a little better once Roy gets all the kiddie-awkwardness out of the way, and Dinah admits she adores the little tyke. Huzzah, them! Comment for encouragement!</p>
        </blockquote>





	1. People are strange

This kid is kind of strange, Dinah thinks. Lanky but toned, too tall for his age really, and hopeful, but so bitter around the eyes. It certainly doesn't ease the mood when ten minutes after he brings the boy home, Ollie takes off to take care of some important matter that she's positive could have waited another day or two.

Matters are only worsened by the fact that the last week has been nothing but shouting matches between her and Oliver, ever since he brought up his insanely gimmicky plan. He had no business trying to bring up a kid, and Dinah just finally lost it and hurled an end table lamp at his head when he mentioned the sidekick plan.

"What? Batman has one!" It's like fighting a ten year old, where the logical argument would be, 'If **Batman** jumped off a bridge would you do it, too?'

She bites her tongue, because she knows he would. Ollie would put on that domino and haul the both of them into that ridiculous... _Arrowcar_ , and put his foot to the floor just to race the Dark Knight into the river.

But theres this _kid_ sitting in the usually vacant bedroom, looking like he's waiting for a bus that sure as hell won't be pulling into the hall anytime soon. He didn't even bring anything with him, just a dusty backpack and the rest she didn't see before they stashed it in Ollie's war-room in the basement.

Dinah wonders whether she should offer to play action figures with him, or drive him to a strip club. Theres just no reading him like this, but she knows she'll have to do something beyond 'Hello, whats your name little boy?' eventually.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

The third day he's there, all he's done is wander around the house poking at things. He's spent the entire morning in the kitchen, and right now, he's made it to the microwave and stopped. Dinah wonders if he's on drugs.

"You hungry?" The kid snaps up from where he was hunched over to investigate the appliance, looking from it to Dinah and back again.

"No, thank you." He frowns a little, clicking his tongue, and despite how little her and the kid have spoken since he's arrived, she'd noticed the habit. Whatever else he was going to say is apparently lost with the click.

"You um... like the microwave, huh?" For a woman known for her quick wit and way with men, Dinah counts this among her lesser moments of skill-usage, but she isn't sure what else to say.

Roy takes a moment to get the words out, looking not unlike a kid in a high school play trying to remember his lines, "Never used one before." He mumbles, shifting from foot to foot like he's about to make a run for it. He's clearly expecting her to laugh and order him outside to play in the mud.

Dinah takes a cautious step toward the skittish youngster, giving her warmest smile and welcoming the nice little flutter it gives her chest. Whatever that feeling is, the big green eyes looking up at her are certainly stirring it. "Well, Ollie's out for the day. Lets see how fast we can wreck this thing."

Three hours later, the kitchen smells awful. Ripped open bags of marshmallows and cartons of eggs carelessly left on the counter, and some sort of sizzling margarine and tin foil mixture that finally seemed to do the appliance in once and for all. 

Roy is positively beaming, until the front door makes a tell-tale click and he gets that skittish look again, ready to run.

Dinah lets the side of her perfectly painted lips quirk into a smirk and claps a reassuring hand on his shoulder, "Don't worry, boy-o. I got this one."

He doesn't seem off-put by the little petname she let slip on accident, but being that it was an organic moment - and that warm fluttering that washes under her ribcage again - she doesn't take it back, just goes about turning the smoke alarm off when Ollie comes it.

And promptly loses his shit.

Arrows and keys clatter to the floor and Roy is definitely not imagining that vein starting to surface on Oliver's forehead. "Wha-"

Dinah swoops in, climbing off the counter and flipping back a lock of her Veronica Lake hair-do, "Baby! You're back!" Roy tries to melt into the floor when she presses an audible kiss to the side of her boyfriend's face and gives a playful little tug at his facial hair. "I was trying to make this French thing called- oh I don't even remember! But it didn't really... Well you know I don't cook and I sorta made a mess but Roy was helping me try and tidy up. Sweet kid, huh?"

Ollie looks back and forth between the two of them suspiciously, but Dinah is just _oozing_ lovability with those eyes and that _mouth_ that he deflates and returns the kiss, giving Roy a wave as he ventures into the freezer to heat up some chili.

Thankfully, Dinah shoos the boy up the stairs to get a shower just as Ollie starts loudly demanding answers about the microwave.

Roy clamors to the stairs just as she turns to walk back down them, throwing his arms around her from behind and whispering a quick, "Thank you!" before he's out of sight again.

Maybe, just _maybe_ this wasn't the worst idea Ollie's ever had.


	2. Culture Shock & Daisies

A few days after the Queen house receives a replacement microwave, Roy comes home with his arm in a sling and a finger splint.

Ollie looks tired, but his trusty sidekick is silently fuming, filling the room with an uncomfortable white noise that Dinah knows is going to be setting the boys on edge for a while.

"What _happened_?" Forgetting the flowers she was arranging on the table, the _clickclickclick_ of her heels across the wood floors breaks the tension in the air just enough that Roy can meet her eyes as she crouches down in front of him, nails pressed to her lips in what he assumes is some kind of womanly worried gesture.

Ollie flops down on the couch, tugging at his facial hair, something Roy has taken to signal a stress reaction of some sort with his new 'mentor', "Dislocated shoulder, and he popped a finger on the same hand. Gonna be out for two, maybe three weeks with this thing."

And there, Dinah can see Ollie's frustration, somewhat outweighing the concern he should have for the boy's condition. Roy just looks at the floor.

Frazzled and tired, Oliver leaves to meet up with Hal, drown his sorrows in his bromance, and Dinah is left with the kid she isn't supposed to be responsible for yet again.

She resists the urge to coddle him, and instead presents a plate with three little celery sticks covered in peanut butter, three little raisins pressed into each one.

"Ants-on-a-log." She sounds proud, and she's smiling. It's hard not to smile back at her effort, despite the fact that he's not sure if he should eat this or put it on the fridge like a prized art project. "I don't really cook, so, you know, best I can do."

"Um, thank you." He looks to the plate on the table, and the strange, uncomfortable clicking sound returns for just a second, but he says nothing and takes a cautious bite of the offered snack.

"Do..." Dinah sits on the coffee table, crossing her sculpted legs and pressing those manicured nails against her mouth again, "Do I make you nervous or something? I'm sorry, I just... you're quiet. Not used to subtle men being around the house, you know?"

She instantly wants to take it back, swallow her words back down her throat and resume pointlessly prodding the daisies in the kitchen, but just a little of that bitterness around the kid's eyes dissipates. She can't walk away from that kind of encouragement.

"No." _click_ "I don't... it's hard to..." _click_ "...to talk to people." He finishes quietly, leaning back into the couch and tapping his fingers against the splint, looking like the kid whose gotten picked last for kickball for the tenth time.

It finally occurs to her, the clicking, the pauses, the skittish eyes when someone asks him a question, "You're not used to speaking _English_." She almost laughs at herself for not thinking of this sooner, but laughing while they discuss the boy's impairment seems a little off-color. It's so obvious now, when he'd force that concentration into his words, that he wouldn't be in the habit of conversations spoken outside the reservation.

"I'll make you a deal. Everyday, I'll find a word you don't have down, and you can teach me something in..." She pauses, eyes going to the ceiling in thought, but Roy, thankfully, saves her from her own ignorance, "Diné. We spoke Diné. And I don't need you to help, I'll be fine. I'll figure it out."

The warm butterfly flutter she's been developing in her chest since the kid showed up is trampled on the spot, and only now that it's gone does she notice the empty space it leaves behind, "I didn't mean to- I'm sorry. Just don't want you feeling weird about this whole thing any more than you have to. Just thought I'd help."

Like a wounded animal, she turns to leave and stay the hell out of Roy's life, but the retreat sparks something in him, something like loss, and despite his limited vocabulary, he damn sure knows that word by heart, "I've never had a mom."

At first, she stops, not because of the words themselves, but because it's probably the loudest thing she's ever heard him say, but when that words sinks in, _mom_ , and the ribcage butterfly starts flapping to life.

Roy hasn't moved from the couch, just looking at his hands, and that bitterness that always hovers around him is gone, morphing into something that looks like depleting hope, "I never... had a mom." He wants to say more, English or not, but can't find the words no matter what language he searches. It could just be the painkillers.

Dinah takes a cautious seat on the armrest, hand reaching out to comfort him somehow but too unsure of where they stand with each other now to do much else than settle on his shoulder. For as much as she tries to pull teeth for conversation, the silence is comfortable.

He smiles a little, one side of his mouth curling up and tilting his head a little to touch at that hand, liking the warm sensation that he assumes he'd be familiar with had he had a real mother at any given point. 

But right now, he doesn't look to put a name to it, just looks up at the ceiling and points, "Whats that?" Dinah smiles, he can feel it even if he can't see it, "Chandelier. _Chan-de-leeer_." He jabs at her ribs, laughing a little - oh hospital medication - "I'm _foreign_ , not deaf. Whats the name for the guy that comes and cleans the house? Is there a name for that?"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------

Oliver comes home around midnight, surprised at Dinah's car still in the driveway, but at the sight of her and Roy curled up asleep on the couch together, Ollie just turns off the TV and sneaks off to bed as quietly as Italian leather shoes will allow.

If Dinah doesn't scold him for staying out all night with Hal at the bar, Ollie won't call her out for spooning with someone half her age.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not particularly proud of this chunk, but soon it's going to be moving along a little better once Roy gets all the kiddie-awkwardness out of the way, and Dinah admits she adores the little tyke. Huzzah, them! Comment for encouragement!


End file.
